In Your Darkest Hour

Dark thoughts

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We are all challenged at times by the various social ingressions of life, from heritable issues like heart disease, cancer, and depression, to stressors brought on by our environment such as traumatic circumstances, loss of any kind, loneliness, and hurt. Many people, because of this, may end up facing “dark moments.” Dark moments occur when individuals feel cornered by a sense of hopelessness in their pain. This is also where psychic vulnerability arises, and where emotional states are fragile and intense, susceptible to impulsivity and risky behavior, and where dark thoughts may usher in drastic options in an effort to end the pain.

As a result, such emotional reasoning may lead to impulsive and extreme actions like abandoning loved ones, drinking, violence, drug indulgence, and suicidality. However, this is not a focus on the end results, although we need to be aware, but rather, on how we can positively navigate such emotionally fueled momentary assessments so that we can avoid the desperate lure of engaging in negative, and otherwise fatalistic, behaviors.

Mind-Wandering

It has been estimated that people spend half of their waking lives in deeply introspective states. And although such a ubiquitous state of living can have positive influences on how we think, it can also have maladaptive possibilities (Liefgreen et al., 2020). To this end, we can quickly drift into a veritable kaleidoscope of thoughts, some good, some bad, some strange. This effect is known as mind-wandering (MW) and it is based on our attenuated focus turned inward.

“MW comprises instances where the mind meanders between sensory experience and thoughts disengaged from current perception. MW has been found to involve a range of thoughts that vary in terms of content and intentionality, as well as having a correlation to external stimuli” (Seli et al., 2018).

Mind-wandering is typically linked to “negative affect” where attention-span wanes, self-control is low, and distractibility is high. This may also be where decision-making becomes most occluded. Meta-awareness, a process that allows us to look candidly into what has happened and appraise the contents of our deeper consciousness, has also been shown through research to be greatly reduced during stressful or traumatic experiences (Brosowsky et al., 2022). In fact, during mind-wandering, this element of meta-awareness is often conspicuously missing.

The 2:00 a.m. hour

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Dark thinking may be most prominent at 2 a.m.

Of course, we can have many thoughts when we are feeling unwell and cornered by circumstance. But when we engage divergent thinking, or thinking that is not logically grounded, the possibilities for an array of bad decisions can change one’s life comprehensively. I had the opportunity to ask noted researcher and author Michael Perlis, Ph.D., about his work on the topic of “dark thinking” and its relation to lack of sleep. He stated, “I have a ton of thoughts about nocturnal wakefulness and dark thoughts. There is a group of us that do this work around the mind after midnight or what we call the sleep of reason, as in, it’s a bad thing to be awake when reason sleeps.”

In fact, Perlis and his team have found that nighttime is heavily implicated in an increase in maladaptive and impulsive behaviors which include suicide, self-harm, violent behaviors, substance use, and food intake. Most notable, his research reveals a risk rate for suicide and ideation at 4.25 times higher during the 2 a.m. hour. For those who remain awake, nocturnal changes in the brain tend to peak at night, and thus, the risk for dramatic shifts in thinking (Tubbs et al., 2022).

Making the psychological shift from dark thinking by using “distraction”

From studies using Ecological Momentary Assessment (ECA), which explores specific populations and their experiences in real time, much can be gleaned. More specifically, researchers studied a sample population of individuals who exhibited suicidal ideation and their most prevalent strategies that seemed to help reduce dark thinking (Stanley et al., 2021). In the study, participants were given a digital assessment device to carry around over a seven-day trial period and asked to respond to whether or not they engaged any of the provided determined strategies. The results were as follows: distraction/positive activity-based coping strategies (i.e., keeping busy: 79%, positive thinking: 58%, socializing: 56%, and doing something good for self: 50%) and mindfulness-oriented strategies (i.e., finding perspective: 60%, sitting with feelings until they pass: 53%, and calming self: 49%) (Stanley et al., 2021). Of these, distraction/positive activity-based coping remained the most impactful in mitigating dark thinking; in fact, 10 times more than the other methods. Although all are good, distraction-based enactment seems the best strategy for mitigating dark thinking potentials.

Positive Distraction

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Positive distraction is key

Activity-based distraction that enacts positive behavioral activation where we actually do something different is most effective. Dark thinking, which is promoted in the emotional center of the brain known as the limbic system, can eclipse front-brain logic when engaged. However, by enacting a positive distraction, we can breach momentary dark thoughts by shifting away from the emotion-centered limbic system to front brain executive functioning. Here are a few examples of how we make the psychological shift away from dark thinking by extending the examples above:

• Build a puzzle. Puzzles can be deeply symbolic as one puts together the pieces, reminding us that similarly, all things can come together.

• Read a fictional book (that is not dark). Reading fiction is a great way to activate our imagination and immerse ourselves in a story.

• Wash the dishes, do the laundry, or clean. These are all therapeutic and can provide a feeling of “taking care of things.”

• Finally, getting good sleep practices in order is extremely important. Nocturnal wakefulness or staying awake, as mentioned above, only promotes the potential for dark thinking. Learning to sleep, and ensuring good sleep practices can help you feel refreshed and gain a better perspective on issues.

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William Thomas, who formulated the Thomas Theorem, has stated that any definition of a situation can influence the present. How we think about something is always malleable in its initial stages, but hard-set in its consequences. We can always change the dark moments during the moment, while it is still feasible, so that they do not negatively change the direction of a life that was meant to be fully lived.